


A Hidden Heterodyne

by zeri



Category: Girl Genius, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8982367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeri/pseuds/zeri
Summary: Harry always knew that he was a Spark, a madboy - and he knew that his relatives would have him sent off to be dismantled for construct parts in an instant if they ever thought he became more trouble than he was worth. If a little more time had passed, someone would have eventually found him and told him about his relationship to the Noble House of Potter. Harry would have spent years under the thumb of older Sparks with Great Plans and Ambiguous Morality.Fortunately for Harry, and perhaps less fortunately for those who had intended to use him, his distant cousin Agatha Heterodyne found him first.(Takes place in some distant-but-not-too-far future, in which Europa is as calm as it's ever going to get and Agatha has control of Mechanicsburg.)





	1. Wherein Harry is Found and Rescued

Harry Potter grew up knowing that Sparks were bad. His Uncle Vernon disliked and mistrusted all politicians, but especially those Sparks in the House of Lords, who constantly rejected laws coming from the House of Commons for reasons that Vernon found ridiculous. Whether the laws being rejected were ones he supported or not, Vernon blamed every legal problem, tax raise, and redundant street sign on the noble Sparks.

Petunia always joined Vernon's griping by saying that at least the noble ones were always watching each other and keeping their peers in check, for fear that they might fall behind in the political and societal arenas, but the real problems were the common Sparks. They tried to sell ridiculous gizmos that singed the furniture at best and blew up at worst, they became distracted from creating better mousetraps by first creating better mice, and when they did finally get to the mousetrap, it often as not destroyed the room they were trapping!

They agreed that the Undying Queen was doing the best she could, though, their eyes sometimes darting around to see if anyone was listening. A Spark who blew up anything that didn't belong to them was either fined or jailed, and sometimes both. A Spark who tried to take over so much as a square foot of their neighbor's property was quickly arrested and never heard from again. And under her rule, the noble families only went after each other, and not the general populace. Of course, a commoner could get involved, either as a bystander or an experimental subject, if they agreed to work for one of the noble families, but both Vernon and Petunia thought that anyone who took that risk was only getting what was coming to them.

They'd taken Harry in when he'd only been a year old, and told him to be grateful. His parents - his father from a Spark lineage, his mother scaring her decidedly non-Spark family with her breakthrough when she was eleven - had both blown themselves up in an experiment. It was only luck that Harry had survived, and Petunia often told Harry that he should feel lucky that anyone would take him in at all. 

Lucky to eat scraps, when his aunt, uncle, and cousin always ate their fill. Lucky to have a place to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, when there was a perfectly good spare room upstairs. Lucky to be able to make himself useful by making breakfast every morning so the rest of the family could sleep in, and do chores so Petunia and Dudley could do as they liked while Vernon was at work. Harry thought he might be able to stand only being a servant in their house if only Petunia didn't constantly tell him how lucky he was to be with family. They probably wouldn't have treated him so poorly if he was really a servant, actually, since a free servant had the option of leaving the household they worked in.

He was in the middle of making breakfast one day when Dudley came down a bit earlier than usual and eyed him suspiciously. Harry tried to ignore him, on the basis that responding usually encouraged Dudley to bully him and not doing anything interesting sometimes led to Dudley leaving him alone out of boredom. Currently, Harry was trying a new recipe for omelets. He knew better than to try to create anything on his own - Petunia was wary of anything that might remotely be considered 'creating' and 'Sparky' - but this had come from one of Petunia's own recipe books, which she never read but bought anyway and displayed in the kitchen in case one of the neighborhood wives came by. It looked like it might be good, and any time the food was better than usual, Petunia let him make and eat extra.

He was adding shredded spinach to the bowl of eggs when Dudley cried out, "Dad, Mum, he's concocting!"

Harry immediately dropped the spinach - into the bowl, unfortunately, which splashed some of the egg onto the counter - and backed away with his hands raised. "I'm not!" he cried out as Vernon entered the room. Dudley smirked and stepped back, eager to watch the fallout.

Vernon's beady eyes glittered as he stepped forward and eyed the bowl. "Is that what you were doing, boy?" he asked. " _Concocting?_ "

"No, I wouldn't! I don't know how!"

"Then you're calling my Dudley a liar, are you?" He raised one meaty hand and Harry steeled himself, knowing that trying to avoid the blow would only result in a worse beating.

"Vernon, please," Petunia snapped, still tying her dressing gown closed as she hurried in. "I can only tell the neighbors that he's fallen into something so many times before I begin sounding like a scratched record." Vernon's hand lowered as she moved to inspect the eggy mixture. Harry let out the breath he'd been holding slowly, knowing better than to draw attention to himself. She dipped one finger in, tasted it, and made a moue of distaste. "It's only omelet batter," she said, and her expression became fond as she turned to look at her son. "But it's a good thing you let us know, Dudders darling!"

"I thought it might be poison," Dudley lied. Or perhaps not so much a lie - Harry was perfectly ready to believe that Dudley thought a full serving of vegetables might poison him.

"The freak's dumb, but not so dumb as all that," Vernon chuckled. "I always make sure he eats from the same lot as what he makes us, don't I?"

"It's very clever," Petunia said admiringly. She looked to Harry and the smile dropped from her face. "As for you, you know better than to do anything that might be taken the wrong way." She took a step towards him and slapped him. "You know better than to make a mess." As he righted his face, she slapped him again. This time she grabbed his chin directly afterward and jerked his face forward so that he was looking in her eyes. "Are we clear?"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia."

"Good." She released him. "I'll clean this up, I don't want you near it. You'll have to do without breakfast today, since you haven't earned it."

Harry breathed in and out carefully, looking down at the ground. "Yes, Aunt Petunia." His cheek stung, but he knew the pain would disappear soon, without a bruise or a break to mark it ever having happened. Petunia was always much more careful than Vernon.

"You can stay in your cupboard until-" There was a knock from the front door and Petunia let out a quiet huff. "What an awful time of morning to be going door-to-door. That can't possibly be one of the neighbors, they're all too civilized."

"Ignore them, Pet," Vernon advised. He followed up with a stern look to Harry, who belatedly headed back to his cupboard. Harry craned his neck to try and see who was outside as he walked by the window, and Dudley took advantage of his inattention to trip him in the doorway. "For God's sake, boy!" Vernon yelled. Harry tried to move back to his feet but was too slow for Vernon, who stomped over and grabbed him by the arm to pull him back up. Harry screamed as he felt his shoulder pull out of its socket.

"Don't be a namby pamby," Vernon ordered, just as Aunt Petunia snapped, "Vernon, I ask you for one thing!" and the knock came again, this time louder. "Open up!" a man called from the other side.

"Dudley, get the door and tell them to leave," said Petunia.

"Aw, but I want to see what you do with the freak!" Dudley reached out to poke Harry's limp arm, but Harry jerked back just in time, glaring fiercely at his cousin.

"Do as your mother says," ordered Vernon, to which Dudley groaned and walked heavily to the front door. 

"Can't you just," Petunia's hands fluttered uselessly in the air, "put it back?"

Vernon frowned at Harry as if this was all his fault. "What if I make it worse? I don't want to waste money on a doctor for him, and if he has one useless arm, he won't be able to help you around the house."

The knock sounded again. Harry turned, one arm holding the bad one tightly to his body, in time to see Dudley standing by the door and listening intently toward the kitchen, just before someone called through, "Open up in the Queen's name!"

"Dudley!" Petunia shrieked. She walked to the doorway, would have pushed over Harry if he hadn't managed to step back in time, and spoke to her son in a harsh tone for the first time Harry had seen, " _Open that door this instant!_ "

Dudley moved to obey faster than Harry had ever thought him capable.

"Welcome to the Dursley Residence," Dudley parroted at whoever was on the other side of the door; the open door was blocking Harry's view. "Is that a construct?"

"Iz hyu a balloon vit a face?" someone on the other side asked, his English heavily accented.

"I heard a scream, what's going on?" a woman asked. She also had a foreign accent, although it was lighter and different from the man who had spoken just before her.

"Lady Heterodyne, if you would _please_ ," a man sighed, the same voice that had told them to open the door. "Young man, are your parents available?"

"Isn't it kind of early in the morning to be asking that?" Dudley responded skeptically.

Harry stayed close to the wall, trying not to jolt his arm, as Vernon and Petunia quickly moved to join their son. "Haha!" Vernon laughed, aiming for boisterous but only sounding nervous. "My boy here's a bit of a jokester. We're always available to help a knight of the realm, of course!"

"It the wish of her Undying Majesty, Queen Albia, that you briefly open your home to..." The man trailed off as a blonde woman in a beautiful green blouse and dark trousers walked right in as if she owned the place, followed by the creature that must have been what Dudley called a construct. It looked like it might have been a man once, before its skin turned green and his teeth became fangs. It wore a purple uniform and matching hat with a gold symbol on it that Harry didn't recognize. The construct sniffed the air as the woman saw Harry and came directly at him.

The knight, still out of Harry's range of vision, sighed. "To the Lady Heterodyne, a Spark and currently a guest in our country."

"You don't want to bother with _him,_ my lady," said Vernon just as the woman said to Harry gently, "Are you okay?"

Harry's brain thought of any number of things he could respond with, ranging from, 'No, my arm's always been like this,' to, 'I'm human, not a small animal; you can talk to me normally.' What he said, though, was, "No." His voice shook, and he pressed his lips together as soon as the word escaped them.

"It looks like you have a dislocated shoulder. I can fix it, but I'll need to touch you." Harry nodded. "Sit down at the table? I'm Agatha Heterodyne," she said as she took his arm carefully. She held his arm just under where he was holding it. "Let go? Thanks." She raised the bottom half of his arm slowly, then rotated it outwards, still keeping the upper half close to his side. Agatha continued, "This is Minsk, a Jäger. He works for me. Relax your shoulders as much as you can."

That was easier said than done when Minsk leaned in and took a long sniff. "Miz Agatha, he smells nize."

"He has my eyes," Agatha added, as if one had anything to do with the other.

"They're _my_ eyes," Harry insisted, watching the Jäger warily as Agatha slowly moved his lower arm back toward the front of his body. Abruptly, his shoulder moved back into place, although it was still very sore. "Oh! Thank you, um, my lady."

"He smells _verra_ nize," Minsk insisted. His smile widened into a grin that showed off all of his many pointed fangs.

Agatha took a step back from Harry and smiled at him. In the background, he could hear his uncle and aunt talking with the knight, although the knight sounded more exasperated than anything. "Is that thing going to eat him?" Dudley asked, raising his voice to make sure everyone heard him.

"No," said Agatha, frowning, "but he might eat you." Dudley eeped and Agatha continued, "Minsk, could you please find a sheet I can use to make a sling for Harry?"

"Lady Heterodyne," Petunia said meekly as Minsk bounded off, "although, of course you're welcome to anything we have-"

"Is that so?" Agatha interrupted. She put an arm around Harry and laid her hand on his left shoulder, being careful not to put any pressure on the bad one. "Then I'll be taking Harry."

There was a commotion as all three of the Dursleys tried to speak at once, the knight covered his face with a palm and sighed almost loud enough to be heard over the din, and Minsk clomped back downstairs with Petunia's favorite and most expensive bedsheet.

Agatha quickly twisted the sheet up and knotted it into a sling for Harry's arm, cheerfully bickering with everything the Dursleys said. Harry could barely hear it, too stunned by the idea that a noblewoman was going to be taking him. Even if she was a Spark and he ended up dying in an explosion, or an experiment gone horribly wrong, it was still better than living with the Dursleys. At least he would be useful.

"We'll still get the stipend for him, won't we?"

Petunia's words broke through his haze. "A _stipend?_ " he asked, his voice cracking in the middle.

"Of course we get a stipend, boy," Vernon boomed. "You didn't think we'd put you up for nothing, did you? Have you out on the street in a flash if the government hadn't been paying us to watch you."

"I sleep in a cupboard!" Harry shrieked. Agatha's hand tightened on his shoulder, but he barely noticed. "You've got a spare room that Dudley keeps all his things in!"

"He's got-" Vernon began, eyeing his guests nervously. "He's got an awful lot of stuff, he needs the space-"

"I make breakfast! I weed the garden, I water the lawn! I clean and dust and you _hit me-_ "

"Don't speak to your uncle like that!"

" _AND THE GOVERNMENT PAYS YOU FOR ME!_ "

"Lady Heterodyne," said the knight stiffly, one hand on his sword, "if you could please remove that from his hand."

"I don't see why I should. Actually, I'm impressed that he managed that one-handed."

Harry looked down to the hand on his good arm, where he was brandishing some sort of short sword made from interlocked silverware. To his right, the kitchen table was devoid of utensils. He dropped it, startled, and the sword clunked to the ground clumsily without falling apart. "A good first try," Agatha said, nodding.

"A Spark!" Petunia shrieked. "I knew it, I knew he would be!" The knight rolled his eyes as he walked past her, further into the house.

"Well, it does run in the family." Agatha smiled widely at Petunia. "And so does getting revenge on those who hurt us. Minsk, how do they smell?"

He shrugged. "Like borink pipple, though de schmall vun schmellz leedle like pig."

"Not Heterodynes?"

"Ho no! Not even a beet!"

"My lady," Harry pleaded, "I'll do anything you want. I- I'll clean your labs, I'll be your test subject, just please actually take me with you."

Agatha bent down on one knee so that he was slightly higher than her and said quietly, "You're nine. I wouldn't expect you to keep your own labs clean, let alone anyone else's."

"They were definitely keeping him in here," the knight said grimly. He stood from where he was kneeling by the cupboard. "Lady Heterodyne, if you'll refrain from using that death ray you're holding behind your back, I'll have these two brought up on charges and find a place for their kid."

"You can't do that!" Petunia wailed as she grabbed Dudley and pulled him close. He immediately began struggling to get out of her grip.

"I can do what I want with a child of mine," Vernon bellowed, "I know my rights!"

"That's true, if Mister Potter were your child. As it is, you are hereby charged with abusing a ward of the government and misusing government funds, since I can see none of it went to him. You can try to run," he added as Vernon shifted a little on his feet, "but I'll just let the Jäger go after you, and I don't think Lady Heterodyne will remember to tell it not to kill you." 

"Come on," Agatha said, rising to her feet and and taking Harry's hand in her own. They left through the front door to where a carriage waited with mechanical horses hitched to the front. One horse stamped his foot as Agatha drew near, and the other one gave an almost silent huff. Agatha patted the head of the one closest to her fondly and said, in a tone that was pleasant even if the words weren't, "If they hadn't made me take that damn calming draught before I left the palace, I would burn this place down and those three in it." Harry looked up at her, concerned - despite the fact that the knight had told her to put away her death ray, he hadn't actually seen it in her hand, and was just starting to think that the rumors about Sparks being utterly mad were exaggerated.

Then again, burning down a house and murdering three people was actually pretty tame compared to what some Sparks did. His parents had basically done that, after all, although they'd only taken themselves in the blaze, and that had been an accident.

"Is dot vy hyu vas beink so smiley?" Minsk asked, tilting his head curiously. "I thought hyu vas chust acting all suttle-like."

"Subtle?" Agatha repeated.

Minsk's voice went up an octave in a terrible falsetto as he said, "Ho yez mizter nightman sir, ve don' do any killink at all!" His voice dropped down again. "Und den hyu send _me_ in to burn all der tings and cut up der hats vile hyu drink tea vit de qveen, verra innocent."

Agatha stared at him. "Minsk," she said slowly, "that is very clever of you."

"It vas?" He worked his mouth for a moment, then asked, concerned, "Hyu not gonna tell de odders about dis, vill hyu?"

"I'll pretend it was my idea, if it makes you happy."

"Tenk hyu, mistress!" Minsk exclaimed.

They all got into the carriage together. Harry dropped Agatha's hand briefly so he could climb in, but daringly picked it up again once they were seated next to each other. She smiled down at him and squeezed his hand briefly.

Harry wanted to stay awake long enough to see his relatives all get carted away, but Agatha's voice was very soothing and something about the Jäger's was as well, and his eyelids began sinking shut. Just before he fell asleep, he remembered to force himself slightly more awake and ask, "Minsk?"

"Yez?"

"When you burn the house down, can you tell my spiders to get out first?"

"Vateffer hyu vant. Dey iz leedle spiders or honkin' big vuns?"

"Little ones in my cupboard, I didn't want Aunt Petunia to catch them." Harry yawned. "I was teaching them multiplication so they could help with the accounts..."

Just before he drifted into sleep, he heard Agatha say, "A _very_ good first try."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["He has my eyes," Agatha added.] -- Agatha and Harry's eyes were of roughly the same shape and color. While the shape was a common appearance in the Heterodyne line, Agatha's green eyes were inherited from the Mongfish family, and Harry's came from an unknown relative. This is a coincidence.
> 
> ["They're _my_ eyes," Harry insisted.] -- No one likes to be accused of theft, and stealing from a Spark often resulted in the confiscation of said thief for parts. Harry was very right to insist upon this point.


	2. Wherein Harry is Made to Feel Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spellcheck with Jägerspeech is hard.
> 
> By the way, Minsk is a canonical character! [Here he is reminding Gorb that any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan.](http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031017#.WGwWVlMrKUk) In the Agatha H. novels, the spelling of his name is changed to Minsc, and he's also the one who tries to flirt with Von Pinn instead of André.
> 
> My beautiful, stress-free month or so hit a rude end as another source of stress entered my life, so the third chapter probably won't be out as quickly. Just so you know.

Years of poor sleep often cut short and bad nutrition kept Harry mostly asleep through the carriage stopping, Agatha carrying him out, and being carried a fairly long distance without people talking over him until he was finally deposited in a bed. When he eventually woke up, he was alone in a room grander than anything he had ever seen before, tucked under blankets that had to weigh many times more than him when bundled together and resting on a mattress that might have been stuffed with angel down, for all that Harry could tell. 

An oil lamp burned at a low setting on the nightstand. The bed was large enough that Harry had to crawl over to get to it and turn the flame up. It was a bit difficult, since his right arm had been put in a proper sling at some point and moving it still hurt. "My lady?" he called out, looking around the room for as far as he could see in one lamp's light. Shadows flickered as the light touched furniture and decorations, but he couldn't see anyone else in the room. "Minsk?" he tried. There was no answer.

Obviously, Agatha had been kind enough to put him in her own bed. She must have been ashamed of his tattered clothing, too, since someone had dressed him in a white nightgown while he'd been asleep. He didn't want to stay in the bed, not when he wasn't particularly clean despite the change of clothes. He also didn't want to poke his head out the door, in case he caused any trouble. Vernon and Petunia often told him to stay out of sight when they didn't need him, and that was likely the rule here as well. Wherever 'here' was, since he still wasn't sure.

Harry slipped off the bed and took the oil lamp in his good hand to walk around the room and light up the other lamps. He wouldn't waste the oil for long, but he wanted to get a good look at the room to see if it needed any cleaning. He hummed quietly as he walked around, turning each lamp up quickly and efficiently. When Harry was done, he looked over the room and was disappointed to see that it was absolutely spotless. There wasn't even a single spider or speck of dust!

Well, if he couldn't clean, he could at least make himself useful. On the other hand, making himself useful would probably require - well, another hand. His right shoulder wasn't so sore that he couldn't use it, and he'd certainly worked through more painful injuries, but Harry didn't want to take off the sling and seem ungrateful.

Obviously, what he needed was a mechanical arm.

Or maybe seven mechanical arms? Spiders had eight arms, after all, and they were mobile, efficent little things. No, that would be five mechanical arms, wouldn't it, since his legs were both perfectly good limbs. 

Harry hurried over to the writing desk to sketch out an idea, completely forgetting that he'd meant to turn the lights off again, but soon found that it was nearly impossible to write with his left hand. He just wasn't used to it! Before he could work on making new arms, he obviously had to invent a stabiliser for the pen to steady out the way his off-hand inevitably shook when he tried to write with it.

Harry was about four projects in when someone knocked at the door. "Come in!" he called out.

A young man in uniform opened the door and bowed politely. "Master Heterodyne, my name is Cresswell. I was ordered to make myself available to you, please let me know if there is anything that you need."

"What? No," he said, struggling to turn a nut by hand. He obviously needed to make a wrench for himself. "I'm just Harry. Lady Heterodyne is out at the moment." He brightened. "Until she gets here, could you give me a hand? I was going to make one, but, oh! You have _two_ hands!" Harry said delightedly.

Cresswell looked uneasy at that and opened his mouth to speak, but Harry spoke first to say, "Hold this for me while I take it apart!"

"Yes, master," Cresswell replied immediately. The door was still open as he came forward to take the alarm clock from Harry.

Another man came by a bit later to bring lunch, which went cold as the servant was conscripted into helping Harry with his projects. A passing chamber maid poked her head in the open doorway to see what the noise was about, and soon she was helping too. Although Harry was far too involved in his own work to notice, the housekeeper for the royal palace's diplomatic guest suites, Mrs. Pewter, eventually came by to see where her staff was disappearing to. By dubious virtue of being a minor Spark herself, she managed to avoid getting pulled in and immediately left to find Minsk, since lecturing Agatha directly was above her station.

Minsk didn't take the situation very seriously. "Nine iz goot age for break trough!" he exclaimed. "Dot keed iz a Heterodyne all right, ho yez."

"Children aren't meant to break through until their _teens_ ," Mrs. Pewter hissed. She had been sixteen during her own, and a laundry maid in a small household. Luckily, she was found and made safe before she could starch the laundry stiff enough to do more than salute sloppily at her. 

"Miz Agatha vas five, und her fadder vas ten. Hyu chust don' get it," he said dismissively, "dots okay. Hyu're not from Mechanicsburg."

"You will stop him from stealing my servants," she said, her voice rising in madness, "or I will _destroy you and all that you hold dear!_ "

"Hyu iz verra pretty, sveethot, but my heart belongs to anodder!"

" _ARGH!_ "

By the time Agatha arrived, stopped Minsk from flirting with the housekeeper by dodging all of her attacks from a mechanical duster and taunting her every time she missed, and sorted out was happening, Harry was thanking his assistants for their help and dismissing them. They were just leaving as Agatha, Minsk, and an embarrassed Mrs. Pewter arrived.

"Oh, Mister Cresswell!" Harry exclaimed. 

"Sir?" Cresswell asked wearily from the doorway.

"Weren't you supposed to stick around for a bit? Lady Heterodyne isn't back yet."

"I think-" Cresswell had just started saying when he caught sight of Mrs. Pewter and spun right back around. "I think you're right! How careless of me!"

"That's okay, she seems very nice, I don't- oh, Lady Heterodyne!" Harry waved cheerfully with his mechanical arm; or rather, the arm waved itself. Harry wasn't sure how to make it obey his thoughts, so he'd made it to be able to perform on its own. Unfortunately, it didn't listen to anything he _actually_ wanted it to do, and he'd mostly ended up ignoring it as he used his helpers to do anything that required more than one hand at a time. "I was organizing your room!"

Agatha looked around. The room was in a state of utter disrepair, as everything from the lamps to the mattress to the carpeting itself had been taken apart in an obvious search for spare parts to use. The only light source in the room was a single oil lamp in a corner, its base covered in a square foot of machinery and its light somehow bright enough to illuminate the entire room. "Well, you got started, anyway," she said, recognizing the signs of a Spark at work. Her own efforts to clean were often interrupted by ideas, and ended similarly. She smiled and shook her head. "But Harry, this is _your_ room."

"I got... I got started," Harry muttered, looking around. "I was, I was..." His eyes widened. "This room is a _mess_."

"Ho yez!" Minsk supplied. Mrs. Pewter sighed heavily and left, frowning fiercely at Cresswell as she went. Cresswell gave her a helpless shrug and followed after her, closing the door after himself.

"I'm so sorry!" Harry cried out, his head whipping back around to face Agatha. "I was trying to make an arm to help me work-"

"It's fine," Agatha tried.

"But then I couldn't write any plans because I'm right-handed, so I had to stabilize the pen-"

"It's really-"

"And I didn't want the light to run out, so I had to fix the lamp, and then- please don't send me back! Please-"

" _Harry!_ " Harry stopped and gulped for breath as Agatha knelt before him and placed her hands on his shoulders, making sure not to hold his bad one too tightly. The mechanical arm gripped her arm in response. "Harry, this is _your room_. I'm not saying you shouldn't try not to go into hyperfocus when you're a guest in someone's home," she added as she detached the mechanical arm from the harness he'd made and set it aside, "but this kind of thing is honestly expected from Sparks. You're not in trouble."

"I have absolutely no idea what's going on," Harry confessed, staring into Agatha's very earnest eyes. They were bright green, like Harry always saw when he went into the good bathroom with the mirror to clean it - and, oh, _that's_ what Agatha had meant when she'd said he had her eyes! That made much more sense.

"It's a little hard to explain," she said, the words coming out slowly, as if she was thinking about each one. She reached out to hold his good hand. "I'm sorry, I couldn't think very well at your _relatives'_ house," the word came out of her mouth twisted, like a curse, "and I meant to be available when you woke up, but the queen wanted to speak with me."

They had the exact same eyes. The same shape, the same color... she was a Spark, like both of his parents had been, like he was even though he'd spent his life trying to hide it. Agatha said that the Spark ran in her family. Agatha had come to the Dursleys' house for him and she'd taken him with her.

"Harry," Agatha began.

"Are we related?" Harry asked quickly, before she could say anything else. Before she could tell him he was wrong.

She blinked at him owlishly. "Yes."

"Schmott keed!" Minsk exclaimed, ruffling Harry's hair roughly. Harry suspected it wouldn't make much of a difference, since his hair never sat flat anyway. "Miz Agatha vas vorried, hyu know. 'Ay, Minsk, my bravest und most handsomest ov de Jägerkin, vat iffen he don' like me?'"

"I didn't say that!" Agatha protested, jumping to her feet. Her face was slightly flushed. "I wasn't worried at all! And anyway, Harry and I are definitely getting along so far! Right?" 

"Right," said Harry, still unsure of his place in the world. Except... it seemed to be with Agatha. "If Aunt Petunia and Dudley aren't related to you too, are you from the Potter side?"

"No, but they're still not actually relations," Agatha assured him. "Or, they are, but only very technically. The trait recognized as 'Heterodyne' is actually a mix of genetics and traits carried in the blood that come from the Dyne - that's a river in our hometown. Jägers can smell the right mix," Minsk preened a little at that, "and he didn't smell it in those people, so the traits from the river must have bred true in you and not them. Thank goodness."

"So... if they drank the water, they'd be Heterodynes too?"

"Maybe," Agatha admitted reluctantly. She cheered up a bit as she said, "If it didn't kill them first, which is much more likely."

The cavalier attitude toward mess and murder reminded Harry of all the negative things he'd heard about Sparks, but, well. She was family. He had family who wanted him, and she was a Spark too. He would leave England with her and never, ever see the Dursleys again.

Harry flung himself at Agatha and nearly knocked her over to hug her tightly with one arm. After she steadied herself, and him by proxy, Agatha wrapped her arms around Harry and hugged him just as fiercely back. "I thought I was the only one," she said, her voice hitching. "I thought I was the only one left."

"I'll stay with you forever," Harry promised. "No matter what." Even if she ended up using him in the end, even if Harry ended up a servant in her home or turned into a Jäger, at least Agatha wanted him. That was all he wanted.

-

Once they'd all calmed down and wiped their tears away - and this included Minsk, who ruined one of Agatha's handkerchiefs by blowing his nose noisily into it - Harry listened avidly to Agatha's descriptions of her life, which had been incredibly exciting.

Harry didn't want to accuse his cousin - third cousin, according to Agatha - of lying, but her adventures seemed awfully unrealistic. "Your life sounds like a Trelawney Thorpe novel," he said instead. Vernon's sister, Marge, had bought Dudley a whole set of the _Trelawney Thorpe: Spark of the Realm_ series for his last birthday, which he'd used to amuse himself by throwing the pages individually and in bunches into the fireplace. Harry had managed to save two of the fifteen books and read them in his cupboard by the light of the spiderwax candles that his spiders made him.

"Trelawney- oh, Gil owns those!" Agatha paused as she examined one of the lamps that Harry had taken apart. Harry was deeply embarrassed by the mess he'd made in a room in _the queen's palace_ that had been loaned to him for use by _Queen Albia_ , the actual undying queen herself, who knew who Harry was and had told Agatha about his existence so she could retrieve him. Agatha told him there were servants to clean up and that they were perfectly used to cleaning up after Sparks, but recent discovery of belonging to a foreign noble family or not, Harry couldn't bear to have someone else clean up after him. He'd spent too much of his life - nearly all of it - working for ungrateful people to be comfortable suddenly becoming one of those ungrateful people himself.

Agatha had offered to help, but she was spending more time examining what he'd made and taken apart than actually doing any cleaning. Minsk had offered to help as well, but Agatha had told him he'd be more useful gossiping with the palace staff and collecting information for her. Minsk had immediately left for the kitchens. Harry thought it spoke well of Agatha that she was so nice to Minsk and that she let him speak casually to both of them, even though he was only a servant.

"I could just build something that would clean the room for us," Agatha mused. Harry, who was much more used to controlling his frequent urges to dismantle and build whatever random thing popped into his head, tried not to sigh. She must have seen his emotions on his face, though, because she put the lamp in the 'discard' pile and her next sentence lacked a the sparky tone in her voice. "These inventions are all really good for a breakthrough. The fact that they all actually _work_ is amazing."

"The arm doesn't listen to me." Harry glared at the arm, which was currently trying to climb the curtains. It was doing a remarkably good job.

"Did you try telling it that it was your creation and it had to listen to you?" Agatha asked innocently. _Too_ innocently, especially considering he had done just that and it had slapped him. Agatha snickered when Harry couldn't stop himself from turning the glare on her, then quickly spoke when Harry started to feel upset. "No- I'm sorry, Harry, it's actually very common," she assured him. "There've been plenty of people who said that to their giant slime monster or penguin-shark construct and gotten themselves eaten for it."

Well. Being smacked wasn't nearly as bad as being eaten, not that he was sure how his arm would do that. Maybe if he built it a mouth that led to some sort of subspace- _no,_ Harry was _cleaning,_ he didn't have time to defy the laws of physics.

"I just don't like being laughed at," Harry mumbled.

"I didn't mean to, but I'll try not to," Agatha promised.

"And anyway, that wasn't a breakthrough." Harry briefly wondered if he should make the bed, since he'd always had to do so for the Dursleys, but he didn't see the point. People just messed up the blanket again anyway when they went to sleep. "It was... I don't know, I felt safer. I thought we were wherever you lived, and since you're a Spark I didn't really think you would mind."

"That's right, you had those spiders! Minsk said they listened to him and left as soon as he said you were all right, by the way. I'm sorry I forgot to tell you earlier. Did you make them yourself?"

"No? They're wax spiders." At Agatha's blank look, he continued, "Some madboy made them ages ago to catch mimmoths, he thought the wax would let them make better traps or something. They got out before the suppression forces could contain them, and now everybody has them."

"You made them smarter, didn't you?"

"It's not that they're dumb, they just need things explained to them properly." Agatha was frowning now, which made Harry both upset and annoyed that such a small thing was making him upset. "I'm not lying," he insisted.

"I didn't think you were," Agatha responded, her frown abating slightly. She seemed honest, which relaxed Harry a bit. "I'm just trying to figure out - you must have broken through _sometime_. Maybe..." Her frown deepened momentarily before she shook her head and forcibly cleared her expression. "You know what? It's not important."

"Um. Okay." He didn't really believe her, but if she wanted to let the subject go, Harry didn't really care. 

When they were done cleaning - done being a compromise between Harry's belief that the room should be put entirely to rights and Agatha's insistence that they could either build a cleaning machine or let the servants finish the work - Agatha went into the hall to find someone she could flag down to have dinner sent. It turned out Cresswell had been waiting just outside the door the whole time, not wanting to get involved but technically not allowed to leave. Agatha assured him he would be relieved of his duties for the day if he'd just send dinner up first, and he thanked her sincerely before leaving.

Dinner came on a cart wheeled in by Minsk, who announced himself by crowing, "Look vat I find! Hyu know dis guy, dontcha?"

"Mister Wooster!" Agatha exclaimed as a man entered behind Minsk. The man was on the shorter side but stocky, and he walked with confidence, although it was with some alarm that he held his hand up and forestalled Agatha's coming forward to hug him. 

"I beg of you, Lady Heterodyne," the man said as his hand fell to his side again, "please do not do anything that would cause Gilgamesh Wulfenbach to illegally enter England and poison everything I own just to see me die of twenty things at once."

"It _is_ you!" said Agatha, beaming. "Harry, this is Ardsley Wooster. He was Gil's laboratory assistant for years, and he's a spy for England. An actual intelligence officer, I mean, not just a sneaky gossip-hoarder."

"A spy? Like Trelawney Thorpe?"

Although Wooster was trying to keep the traditional British stiff upper lip, it was obvious that he was holding back a smile. "That is a very kind comparison. I am not Gifted, and my service to the realm is not so great as Miss Thorpe's, but I do endeavor to contribute to the safety of the kingdom. You are Mister Harry Potter, correct?"

Wooster held out a hand for Harry to shake and, feeling very adult, Harry did so. "Heterodyne," he corrected shyly. "I'm a Heterodyne now."

"I'm actually here regarding that," said Wooster.

"Der food iz gonna get cold," Minsk pointed out. 

"Ah, yes, I'll be brief. Mister Potter - and I'm sorry, it _is_ Potter until you correct the matter legally - is a British citizen, and there are a few technicalities to be sorted before he may leave the country, not the least of which is his inheritance, which is currently being held in trust."

Harry and Agatha both moved closer to each other at the same time. She bent slightly to take his hand. "There is no way in which Harry isn't leaving with me," Agatha said dangerously. Minsk grinned in what was less a smile and more a baring of his fangs.

"No, of course not," Wooster said quickly, his eyes darting back and forth between the Heterodyne and her Jäger. "Like I said, technicalities. Breakfast will be served in your rooms at eight, and at nine you'll be taken to a representative of her majesty to discuss these matters. The part requiring Mister Potter's presence should be minimal, after which, if you find it convenient, he may spend the rest of the time you are in meetings with the palace's day school, where children of nobles currently living in London are tutored and entertained while their guardians are busy."

"They don't have anyone else to watch them?" Agatha asked skeptically.

"You might say it's a bit like the Castle Wulfenbach school used to be."

This obviously meant something to Agatha, who said, "Ah," and let the subject drop. She gave a minute shrug. "Sure, it can't hurt," she said, adding casually, "Minsk can stay with him."

"I think not!" exclaimed Wooster, as Minsk said, "Soundz goot, long as hyu don't expekt me to learn too." 

"Lady Heterodyne," Wooster began.

"Mister Wooster," Agatha interrupted firmly. "I'm very grateful to Queen Albia for telling me about Harry and helping me to retrieve him, and I don't think she would do anything to him after going to that effort. It would be counterproductive."

"Your faith is encouraging," Wooster said dryly.

" _However_ ," she continued, "I _don't_ trust every single person in this palace, and I won't leave him alone."

"You entrusted him into the care of the palace servants quite readily up until you rejoined him at the end of his 'episode' today."

"Please," Agatha said, rolling her eyes and waving a dismissive hand. "Violetta's been here the whole time."

"She," said Wooster, who then stopped, at a loss for words. "...What?"

"Alo, Wooster," came a voice from the ceiling.

Wooster jumped slightly; Harry actually yelped. They both looked up as a panel in the ceiling moved aside and a woman with short, mousey brown hair waved down at them. Wooster said something indignantly in another language.

Violetta responded patiently in the same language, as if speaking to a very stupid person. She looked to Harry after and said, with an accent like Agatha's but much stronger, "Hello, Harry. It's nice to meet you."

"Hello," Harry said a bit weakly. Violetta gave a small wave and moved the panel back into place; the ceiling looked unbroken again once she was done.

Wooster stared upwards suspiciously for a long moment before he sighed. "In that event, please allow Knight Violetta to accompany Harry instead."

"Hoy!" Minsk exclaimed. "I'm goot vit de cheeldrins!"

"That's likely because you think like one," Wooster said.

Minsk shrugged. "Vell, mebbe."

They argued for a minute more before Agatha agreed to let Violetta accompany Harry instead. Harry was eying the ceiling during this, still trying to see where the panel had been and figure out if it was just a very clean cut or if some perception alteration device was being used, but even without looking it seemed like Agatha gave in too easily.

Wooster either pretended not to notice or was so relieved that he actually couldn't tell. He bid them a good night and left.

"Vat's de plan?"

Agatha spoke to Minsk quietly as the ceiling panel moved aside while Harry watched it. He wasn't sure, but he _thought_ that it was just an engineering trick and not an illusion. Violetta dropped down until she was hanging from the hole with one hand, used the other to move the panel back into place, and then dropped, landing in an easy crouch just next to the dining cart. The panel fell precisely into place. Harry thought he might get a ladder to go up and study it before they left the palace for the continent - if he'd had a place to hide things when he was with the Dursleys, it would have been much easier to hoard small items and food. Not that he thought he would be likely to need it in the future, but, well... better safe than sorry. And it never hurt to have a small food storage, even if he did get fed properly in the future.

He dragged his attention away from the panels to watch Violetta inspect the food, sniffing it and even going so far as to taste a few bits. She was a small woman with cropped brown hair that glinted red where the light hit it, and she wore a shirt and trousers that were too close-fitting to be considered proper for a lady, but loose enough that she had no trouble moving in them. Her belt held several knives and a number of small, full pouches.

"Food's safe," Violetta announced. 

"Great, I'm _starving_ ," said Agatha. "Harry, you must be hungry too. When's the last time you ate?"

Harry tried to think back. He wasn't even sure if it was still the same day that he'd met Agatha, or if he'd slept through it. "Yesterday?" he tried.

"He had a sandwich and some orange juice while he was inventing," Violetta said. Her foreign accent was as subtle as Agatha's now, and not nearly as thick as it had been when Wooster was in the room.

"I did?" He vaguely recalled someone bringing lunch, but he didn't think he'd eaten any.

"I checked it for poison and put it in your hand any time it was empty. You nearly poured your juice into the lamp at one point, but I switched it out in time."

"I don't remember that at all." Most of that time was a blur, but he liked to think he'd remember someone taking something _away_ from him. He's fairly certain that something like that would have annoyed him, as deep into the madness as he'd been at the time.

Violetta shrugged. "I'm _really_ fast."

Agatha made up a plate for herself and tried to make one for Harry, but Violetta removed nearly half of what she put there. "He's tiny!" Agatha argued. "He needs to be fed!"

"He's malnourished and he'll just throw it up," Violetta insisted, handing Harry the plate before Agatha could add any more to it.

Agatha spun to face him, but visibly tried to calm herself when Harry took a cautious step back. "Harry, if you want more to eat, you can have as much as you want."

"Thank you." He was absolutely not going to eat more than what he had; it was already more than what the Dursleys gave him when he was being rewarded. As much as Agatha was trying to do her best, he thought that Violetta was right in this instance.

"Maybe I'll make you a nutritional drink," Agatha mused. "Something with a lot of vitamins... or something you could drink once a day and not need to eat otherwise, that would be useful..."

Violetta shook her head. "Harry, please promise me you'll won't drink or eat anything before I test it first."

Agatha rolled her eyes.

" _Especially_ if Agatha's the one who made it."

" _Hey_."

There wasn't much in the way of furniture left in the room, and Harry didn't want to eat in his bed - Dudley did that all the time, and Harry was forever cleaning the crumbs from his sheets. He sat on the floor instead and ate quickly as Agatha and Violetta bickered with each other. He was fairly certain they were friends, from the way they both smiled and neither of them were going for their weapons, but he felt safer when he could keep an eye on everyone in the room.

When there was only a bread roll left on his plate, Harry wrapped it in a napkin to keep for later and pushed it under the bed. When he looked up, he saw Minsk openly watching him. Before Harry could feel embarrassed, Minsk winked at him and stuffed a bread roll from the food cart into his sleeve, then jammed several other items into his mouth. Minsk grinned at Harry, his cheeks bulging and food threatening to come out from behind his fangs, and tentatively, Harry smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Luckily, she was found and made safe before she could starch the laundry stiff enough to do more than salute sloppily at her.] While the general public often believed that 'being made safe' was a euphemism for 'killed before they can cause harm,' many of the Sparks who disappeared from the public eye were brought into Her Undying Majesty's employ, often under varying amounts of calming daught.
> 
> ["Some madboy made them ages ago to catch mimmoths, he thought the wax would let them make better traps or something."] Many Sparks have tried to come up with a new and better mimmoth trap. Wax spiders were better at it than most, but that same intelligence that allowed them to be good trappers also caused them to refuse to do so without adequate pay. Castle Heterodyne had similar problems with many of its fauna.


End file.
